Wednesday, August 10, 2011

More Obvious Examples That Roofing Contractors Should Carry General Liability Insurance

By Macbeth Williams


Most of you roofing contractors have had concerns about contractors general liability and what it is precisely that you have to lose sleep about while working as a general contractor or construction firm. In this essay I will try to explain many of your worries about California contractor liability insurance and hopefully help alleviate your fears.

The idea of liability insurance is to deliver protection for the insured from the possibility of financial repercussions that their business may unwittingly incur due to their operations. Those looking for independent contractors liability insurance may include any business or individual whose type of business may be held responsible for both current and possible future claims to the general public or to the customers and third party members with whom that company has contracted for. A good example of this can be a roofing company who has installed a skylight that they did not realize was faulty, only to have the installation break and fall a couple weeks later, causing physical injury to a person and physical damage to the structure. A construction liability insurance policy would, under normal liability conditions, pay the medical bills and any other damages deemed to the injured, and provide a nice cushion against cost and potentially devastating court trials.

Building without roofing contractors liability insurance is a bad idea and very dangerous. Even if the cost of having it can seem a little bit steep, the possible detriments for you of not securing it are for more steep than you may desire to think. Many policies will allow for an additional insured endorsement or specific verbiage that is designed to cover specific clients who can be affected by the actions or working conditions of you or your company. When you are in any situation in which a person might be hurt as a result of your operations it is of highest importance that you cover yourself, your contracting company and any clients that seek coverage and defense under your insurance policy.

When looking for a roofing contractors general liability insurance policy you will be offered an aggregate general liability limit which will be a statement of the maximum amount of monetary damages your business will be insured for in twelve months on that exact policy. You will also be notified of the amount of coverage your company is covered for per each specific claim, or per an occurrence.

You can also be sure to understand precisely what your rights are, what types of endorsements there might be in the policy and what type of litigation assistance you are entitled to should an unfortunate event occur. In some states contracting firms must warranty their work against certain defects for a specific number of years. If your policy has an endorsement limiting the coverage to less than that number of years, that insurance policy might not be correct for you.

Even with the building and contracting trades have declined recently, any operation posses tremendous risk that makes general liability insurance not only a must have but imperative. One more point that you might want to think about is that no matter how competitive your prices could be an increasing number of prospective clients will not hire a roofing contracting firm who does not purchase roofing contractors liability insurance. The dangers are just too high to rely on homeowners insurance policies or contractor's license bonds for coverage and you must obtain the protection that a contractors insurance policy is designed to deliver.




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